ter of a century cotton production has been fostered in India, Southern Russia, and in Egypt so extensively that the output from these countries has been crowded into Europe in such quantities as almost to bankrupt the people of our Southern States.

The Great Richmond Terminal Company, controlling and operating the vast railroad system of the South, was, apparently, on the top wave of prosperity five or six years ago. The people of the South were well-to-do and contented. The railroad company shared the prosperity of the people. The crash came to the planters and other business interests of the South, and the railroad property was crushed in the common ruin.

The re-organization of the Richmond Terminal system was necessary for the safety of the business interests of the South. Able and wealthy gentlemen attempted to perform that task, but failed owing to the conflict of interests and other complications. With the lapse of time, Mr. Morgan and his associates had the courage to venture their credit and money in the rehabilitation of that property and accomplished the work in a manner recognized as eminently successful. But in the re-organization of that great system a new policy was inaugurated. Heretofore, railroad re-organizations saw maimed, ead, and worthless members fastened to the trunk. These were always worse than useless and a burden to the commercial body. Mr. Morgan cut to the bone; severed the worthless limbs and left the railroad in healthy condition. The result of this action was that millions of dollars of seeming securities, actually worthless, were wiped out, leaving the re-organized property in shape to be operated for the best interests of the entire South. This wise and heroic action established a precedent followed in all subsequent re-organizations of the unfortunate systems of railroads pressed into bankruptcy by the relentless shrinkage of values throughout the world, due to commercial war.

Thus it is shown that the capitalists owning the property now constituting the Southern Railway lost millions of dollars owing to the crushing of the cotton interests. The losses of the people of the South, however, were even more tremendous. The fall in price of cotton in six years from ten cents to seven and one-half cents per pound entails to-day a loss to the South of at least $100,000,000 annually as measured with income of six years ago. At five per cent. that means the annihilation of at least $2,000,000,000 of national wealth in cotton alone. The railroad companies, instead of being in the remotest way responsible for this appalling loss, are common sufferers with the people.

During the past fifteen years the Pennsylvania Railroad Company has annually expended millions of dollars in straightening the alignment and in reducing grades on that railroad. The entire road from Philadelphia to Harrisburg practically has been rebuilt, and these improvements unquestionably will steadily be prosecuted if funds are available for that purpose. Like improvements have been carried forward on the Lake Shore Railway from Buffalo to Chicago, until to-day that company has the greatest mileage of continuously low grade railroad in the world, enabling that company to refund its mortgage debt in a new consolidated bond at three and one half per cent., the lowest rate of interest on any railroad on earth. Who receives the benefit of these enormous annual expenditures on the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Lake Shore Railway? Not the stockholders of these railroads. During the period of fifteen years past, the dividends paid the stockholders of these companies have alike fallen; the former from eight to

five per cent. and the latter from eight to six per cent. Every dollar of advantage accruing from the enormous disbursements of these companies for betterments during fifteen years has been received by the people of the United States in the shape of reduced freight and passenger charge.

The German government owns and operates ninety per cent of all railroads in that Empire. The state owns and operates all railroads in Russia and Siberia. The government has built, owns, and operates nearly all the railroads in India. Here is colossal pooling of railroad interests. Those empires use their railroad systems as mighty engines of warfare. They reduce charges to actual cost or less on portions of their lines, if necessary, to destroy commercial competitors, adding extra charges elsewhere to recoup losses.

The salvation of the people of the United States absolutely requires the pooling of the wealth and power of our railroads under State supervision, that they may be used as a resistless machine to attack, shatter, and destroy the commerce of any or all nations on earth, if our national life can be preserved by that means.

No corporations have been so steadily devoted to the common interests of the people as some of the great railroad systems of the country. No associations of citizens of America have administered individual and national interests with greater integrity and more signal success. The shrinkage of world values is so tremendous that to-day the national interests demand national aid to our vast railroad system if improvements such as have been already described are to be continued. Such improvements alone will enable us to wage commercial war sucessfully against the world.

The aid necessary to conserve the interests of the laboring masses is pooling railroad earnings. Thus it will be possible for our railways to save millions of dollars now annually wasted on competitive agencies, enabling them to create a fund with which to cut down grades and make other necessary improvements on their roadway-in the South restoring prosperity to the cotton planters and in the North reviving the courage of the food producers to continue the struggle against their old and their new competitors in the food market of the world.

The most superficial consideration of this momentous question must convince thinking men of the truth of these statements.

J. A LATCHA.

HOW THE RED CROSS SOCIETY WORKS.

THE signing of the treaty of the Red Cross, by the United States in 1882, was, as is well known, brought about by Clara Barton, who had been made familiar with Red Cross methods upon the battlefields of the FrancoPrussian war. It was an international treaty, signed by the leading governments of Europe, an association for the alleviation of sufferings from war, and to prevent barbarity upon the battlefield. It was Miss Barton's

idea, however, that the feature of the American Association of the Red Cross should be a system of national relief, an organization ready to give help at once in time of great calamities. "No country is more liable than our own," we read in Miss Barton's address to the President and Congress of the United States, "to great overmastering calamities, various, widespread

and terrible.

What have we to meet these emergencies, save the good heart of our people and their impulsive generous gifts?"

She pleaded for an extension of the original design of the Red Cross in the organization of local societies throughout the country, the same to be held firm by the international constitution of the head society; such societies to stand ready to give aid, in sudden emergencies, and that without having first to collect funds. Moreover, surplus funds were to be carefully looked after; each calamity, in brief, to be the benefactor of its successor; a system which has had admirable illustration, within the last two decades. The surplus funds collected for the sufferers from yellow fever in Florida, for instance, were ready for the flood at Johnstown, and a part of what was left over from Johnstown could be sent by telegraph, at once, to Oil City, as soon as the news of that frightful conflagration was received: "Two hundred dead; the river one mass of flame." In such crises, one dollar in hand is worth ten that must be collected.

One of the first of the local societies organized by Miss Barton was that of Monroe County, of the State of New York-usually called the Rochester Red Cross, and often spoken of by Miss Barton as "the grand old banner society of Monroe"-so thoroughly was the county organized, and so prompt and generous its help when called upon. A brief record of that county organization of the Red Cross is here presented-the only county of any State that has been thoroughly organized for ready relief. The society has been notably successful in every way, and is still vigorous and ready to give upon a moment's notice to any calamity having just claim upon it. It is made not infrequently the custodian of funds collected outside of its jurisdiction-suggesting that its name might properly be changed to that of the Western New York, or the Genesee Valley Red Cross Society.

This account is not given to trumpet its work, but to show how effectively and simply it has been done; and the gain that such an organization would be to States, counties and cities generally. If Monroe County of the State of New York is not the only county that has been thoroughly organized for this work, its officials have been misinformed. Similar societies were organized at the outset; but they did not perfect the idea of Miss Barton, and the most of them have ceased to exist. The Monroe County Association still retains the name under which it was organized by her, and the constitution which was approved by her.

Following the reorganization of the parent society, a few years ago when branch-societies as first organized were done away with, the Monroe County Society became, in a sense, an independent relief association, but that without severing its relations with the parent society, and sending its contributions in time of sudden emergency to Miss Barton as before.

Since the organization of the Monroe County Red Cross Society in 1882, it has expended, in money alone, for the relief of sufferers from calamities beyond local relief, nearly fifteen thousand dollars. What has been given in clothing, provisions, etc., doubles that amount.

When the news came of the disastrous floods of the Mississippi in 1882, the society had been organized but a few months. The Michigan fires, the floods in the Ohio valley, and famine among Indian tribes, had so opened the hearts and purses of the people, however, that there was a considerable balance in the treasury, and liberal aid could be telegraphed at once to the Mississippi sufferers, and that without delay in making collections; an ex

perienced agent was also sent on to report what was most needed. "Seeds, came back by wire, "seed corn, garden seeds-none in the country." Chicago was appealed to for the seed-corn, and it was promptly given, for Chicago never forgets how the long trains laden with supplies were once speeding to her from all over the land. The head of a great Rochester seed-houseHiram Sibley-gave at once ten thousand dollars worth of seeds, and transportation through, and that without stopping; also, the proper person to attend to the re-shipping of the seeds at Memphis, where they were to be distributed to five States.

The waste, that seems inevitable and unavoidable at such times, the misappropriation of funds, to call it by no harsher name, disappears under a system which accounts for every dollar, and which must see that each calamity leaves enough in the treasury for the next call upon it. Money is not raised by memberships in the Monroe County Society, nor by stated collections; that method has been tried and discarded; its first fund was largely collected in that way. Now, whenever a demand upon public sympathy, like a flood at Johnstown, a cyclone in the West, pestilence in the South, causes a tide of benefaction to outpour, that tide flows surely and steadily into the channel of the Red Cross to be expended by Miss Barton. The news of a calamity calls the M. C. R. C. S. together at once, and it is ascertained without delay whether the disaster is beyond local relief; the treasurer usually telegraphing from the meeting for information, and wiring, not infrequently in advance, the amount of the appropriation that will be made if called for. Occasionally the answer comes back, as from Milwaukee, after the great fire of four years ago, and from St. Louis recently, that outside help is not required. There is always something in the response revealing more than business-men usually put into telegrams, a hearty appreciation of the helpful sympathy extended. . . "Draw on us at once for five thousand dollars, if you need it," was telegraphed to Miss Barton from the M. C. R. C. S. when it was known that she had started for Johnstown. Upon her arrival she responded: " Will draw on you for eight thousand at once." "All right, will honor your draft."

Some four thousand dollars more were given to Johnstown by the M. C. R. C. S.-the furuishing of twelve barracks complete; twelve families of four persons to a barrack. Physicians and nurses were also sent-no more, nor as much as many other cities were doing, but to how many was a surplus fund returned? How many gave their large collections to the custodianship of an organization that in helping Johnstown was providing also for the next calamity? Johnstown, as before stated, through this system of forecast could give five hundred of the Monroe County surplus fund to Oil City, and five hundred to Grand Haven, Mich., after its great fire. Is not this a different story from that following the relief of calamity generally? They tell us of the fine and costly road built in the suburbs of a city to which the whole country gave generously in a time of its frightful affliction from pestilence, a road that was paid for in money left over and appropriated by local agencies-only one case of many like it since the disbanding of Relief Commissions at the close of the war, and the disappearance of large sums never yet accounted for.

The catalogue of calamities beyond local relief, to which aid has been promptly sent by this single local society, need not be given here. It reaches from the Michigan fires of 1881, down to the Armenian atrocities of to-day. Possibly a list of what has been considered in committee and dismissed as

having no just claim upon the society would be interesting. That list is a long one, for the watchdog of the treasury of the M. C. R. C. S. is never to be coaxed by sentimentalism into unjustifiable appropriations. It looked for awhile, at a conference of the society not long since, as if one thousand dollars would be sent to Japan in recognition of what she had achieved in civilized methods of warfare, and of her claim besides upon our National Red Cross Association in time of war. The story of the Red Cross in the hospitals of the Japanese will never be forgotten. But the money was not sent, nothing more than an expression of sincere fraternity; for, according to a strict interpretation of the constitution of the society, no more might be permitted,

What will be the next great calamity beyond local relief? Would it not be well if a considerable part of the community, say our leading cities, stood ready to meet it when it comes-to telegraph at once to Miss Barton, or the Governor of the State, or the Mayor of the city, or to some one in authority (if not to a sister-organization): “Can send you five hundred dollars at once. Do you need it?"

Would not that be an improvement upon what usually follows in the excitement attendant upon the news of a sudden and great calamity? What better scheme for preventing waste, and the misappropriation of funds?

Is it not most expedient that every community should organize and maintain a local organization, like that described, in order that sudden ap peals for aid from the National Association may be answered without delay? Each community would be in a sense an independent relief association, yet supporting the parent society, holding in readiness necessary funds and materials, and distributing its relief either through the agents of the State or National Society, or through responsible agents of its own." JANE MARSH PARKER.

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOL.

"THEY say there is a young lady in New Haven," wrote Jonathan Edwards one hundred and fifty years ago, "who is beloved of that Great Being who made and rules the world and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being comes to her and fills her with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on Him. She has a strange sweetness in her mind and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct, is of a wonderful calmness and universal benevolence, and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure."

"Homesick? Not much! I came to college, and I stay in college, to get rid of the restraint of home and to have my own way. Now, when I go home for my vacation, I am a distinguished visitor and every one looks up to me and defers to me."

Thus did a young girl, a few months ago, sum up her ideas of life's aims and responsibilities.

This nineteenth century girl and the eighteenth century maiden are extreme types, it is true, but are types, nevertheless-the one, of what our country has produced in the past; the other, of what it is producing now. The eighteenth century maiden was the product of rigid discipline, hardships, self-denial, much introspection, and a stern devotion to duty. Into